Dojji

That's what I mean though. People lambaste DD for his "win now" moves but his moves actually make perfect sense for a 3 year window, or did when they were made. Good short term moves that also augment the team for the intermediate term give the team time to iron our the remaining holes and possibly build an extended winner. Right now we don't have a hole in our rotation, and we don't have a major hole in our lineup at all. Trading for an ace would be an exercise in making problems for ourselves -- it might be worth it anyway, aces are incredibly valuable, , but if I'm an owner, I don't rest my team on a "maybe" if I don't have to. And we don't -- this rotation is made up almost entirely of pitchers that have shown at least flashes of TOTR ability. One of these guys should be "on" at any given time.

I see "sensible" as something that increases rather than decreases our chances of being a winning team in 5 years. That's the kind of "sensible" trade I don't see happening.

Now see, I know you don't mean it that way, cp, but in this market, that statement in bold is actually a contradiction in terms. There's no ace on the market in FA, and that means that anyone who might consider trading a high level SP is going to be in a position to demand the sun the moon and all your stars. I can't look at the league right now and fathom a nonidiotic trade for a TOTR SP, especially because there's so few true year in, year out TOTR SPs out there, fewer than one per franchise (and owing to the tragedy in Florida, there's one less).

Indeed. As it stands right now we have the best rotation we can have without doing something ludicrous. That's why the focus has been on the huge gap left by the parting of Ortiz.

There is a period of time after the WS, can't remember how long, it's only a few days though.

So nevermind that he might not actually be able to play third base?

It worked fine for the Yankees during the dynasty. Don't be so closed-minded. Swihart is far behind our other options defensively and his bat is ready now. We have no need for him in the field, and the last time we tried to play monkeyshines with his position he was hurt within 2 weeks. DH is a good spot for a guy who is the third best defender on the team at his own position, however athletic he might be.

I would have no objection to the return of Napoli, except that we already have a guy who can do everything Napoli does offensively (Young). Napoli as a RHH isn't quite what we need. Guys -- I honestly think the best way to go is to leave the DH spot open. We have a lot of youngsters to filter into this lineup and it's going to be a struggle to get them all the AB's we need to sort the wheat from the chaff even with the DH spot open. There's more uses for the DH than having a big slug clogging the position up. With the number of different young players we need to get AB's for in the very near future (Swihart, Moncada, Dubon, Hernandez, Travis) I can see a very good argument to be made that the key here is to not permanently fill the DH and use it to help players get the playing time they need to show their stuff. I think by the end of the season it's very possible that our fulltime DH will be Blake Swihart.

It is not the nature of most fat people to get thinner as they age. IF they're going to accomplish that, it's going to take more and more hard work and sterner discipline every single year.

Hochevar, Axford, Tomlin, possibly Holland, possibly Lopez. Luke Hochevar is really flying under the radar right now, he might be a good smartball pickup.

Why not? It's an appropriate response for the level of "production" Pablo has provided over the last 24 months. When you're not even sure the guy can physically handle the rigors of his position anymore... you really need to be taking his recovery 1 step at a time and not even assuming he can start at 3B on Opening Day even a little bit. When a guy has essentially been utterly ineffective for 2 years, you need to take him for what he is, and NOT for what he used to be. Like I said, if I'm the Sox, I start him part time at third base in the Spring, then full time in AAA for at least 4 weeks, and see how he handles the extended grind, before he plays one inning in Boston. Use the interval to test your other options like Shaw and Hernandez. Once Panda proves he can handle a month of regular 3B without either sucking or getting hurt, then you move him up to the big leagues and find out what he can give you -- not before. When you're that heavy, being able to play third base for a game or two isn't enough information, the real problem when it comes to weight isn't so much game to game performance as increased wear-and-tear, you want to see how well he can weather the full grind, and that takes time to know. Like I said, I'm 100% convinced that we break camp with Travis Shaw as the nominal starter with Holt and Hernandez backing him up and Panda on extended rehab, even if The Plan is to eventually transition back to Panda.

It would take all the salt in the North Atlantic to get me to swallow the narrative from the Pablo camp right now, remembering how such pronouncements ended last year. Do we have independent confirmation of this alleged loss of weight? Because being in a position of having been lied to once, I really don't feel like voluntarily letting myself be easily lied to a second time.

If I was in the market for the thing that Cespedes is, I'd be all in. The team could easily find some way to shoehorn Cespedes onto their roster. As much as I love Beni, I wouldn't mind Cespedes in left to compliment Betts and Bradley. But I think the team has more pressing needs.

I just don't see how so many people can blindly assume Pablo Sandoval is still a big league third baseman. The last time he played the position he immediately hurt himself, following a year in which he played the position very poorly, and he's only gotten older since then. I understand that the last month of the season left a very bad taste in peoples' mouths vis-a-vis Shaw, but I really do think we need to not engage in binary thinking here. Sandoval will get his chance this Spring but until we have a better snapshot at where he is this march, weightwise as well as in terms of physical conditioning (the two are different things, which is how Sandoval was ever able to carry that much gut in the first place while playing a position normally reserved for a team's actual athletes), pencilling him in for a big league job right out the gate is extremely stupid. Sandoval should be treated like a reclamation project -- as if we just signed him for league minimum on a flier to see if he can do the job. Forget the money, sunk cost is sunk, that's the level he's put himself at. I think it's extremely likely that Sandoval will be sent to Pawtucket for an extended "rehab" assignment (to continue to rehabilitate his gut) and we'll be breaking camp with Shaw this Spring. This is based on the fact that the last time we saw Pablo, he was clearly substantially overweight, perhaps by as much as 100 pounds, and it might take a very significant period of time to work him back into shape. Now he could prove me wrong, but I think the team is going to move very slowly with Sandoval, especially on the defensive side of the ball, to make sure he's fully up to the task before throwing him to the wolves, and that we're going to go with a guy who got it done at a very effective level defensively and showed some good flashes at the plate and returned 2 WAR last year, over the guy who showed up to camp literally bloated last year and put up about -1 WAR between last year and the injury-aborted no-show this year where he showed up on the team rosters just long enough to have a ridiculous and embarrassing weight-related incident before hurting himself and hitting the showers for the balance of 2016. As not-fun as September was for Shaw fans, April was a cataclysm for Pablo fans, and I think that needs to be remembered and to shape expectations for 2017, because I am nowhere near convinced we won't have further weight-related hijinks and shenanigans from the Sandoval camp going forward. I count on nothing from Sandoval until he proves he can be counted on. At least Shaw is a decent defender.

If we can't talk about things that have already been talked about this is going to be a quiet Hot Stove season

I would be happy if the team put almost all the money fans are earmarking into expensive acquisitions of new talent, into buying out arb years for some of our top young stars, especially Bogaerts and Betts, both of which are already star level and both of which actually have the potential to develop further (especially Bogaerts). Buying out arb years on these players is almost certain to be a good investment and should be done as soon as practical. I think it's very very likely that Bogaerts has at least a couple 30 HR seasons, and I'd like to see him accomplish this on a team friendly deal.

I'm not anxious to fill the DH role just because we can, meanwhile if our issues revolve so much around the pitching, an upgrade at catcher may be the answer. The long and short of it is I would like to see the DH spot left open, because we have a lot of pieces to shift around and try to work into the lineup as it is, between Shaw, Young, Moncada, Swihart, Travis, etc. and the DH slot may be useful in trying to find them all plate appearances. One more aging bat may be more confusion than help.

Probably? Nothing. If I had to guess I'd say Yadi's a Cardinal for life, or nearly. But a veteran catcher is at the top of my wish list if I'm the Sox right now. We really don't need so very much else to make a deep playoff run and I have a theory that our pitching played down in the playoffs because of the young catching. I might be OK with the philosophy of letting the rookie catchers gain experience if we weren't on a 2 year window with our pitching contracts, but it's clear we're thinking short term right now, and that means I want a veteran to stand behind whichever young guy is our go-to backstop next year.

You're saying he doesn't?

I think we need to temporarily forget that there was ever a baseball team named Chicago White Sox. Seriously, I do not understand why the Quintana/Sale meme even exists. There was one rumor back in May that Sale wasn't happy with the team over the Drake LaRoche thing, that's the only smoke there's ever been. We need to let this train of thought die.

Well if I could pick one player in the entire league to add to the team it would be Yadi Molina.

Well, I don't think there was a magical "instill trust and confidence" button that Farrell refused to press for no good reason, so I don't see the issue. Working with another human being is never that simple. I'm sure Farrell did his best but at the end of the day Price has to execute his pitches and take the postseason one pitch at a time. I would love to have a much more experienced catcher guiding this team. I really think that some of our issues in the postseason stem from having an all-young catching staff with little to no postseason experience. THe fact of the matter is that no one has to up their game in the postseason to quite the extent a good catcher does, and no one can steady a pitcher quite like their catcher does -- but if the catcher is nervous and uncertain, that's going to magnify any mental issues a pitcher is having. So if we're having this problem across a pitching staff, I'd look to the catching. Hopefully having seen the dragon this year, our young catchers will be in a better position to meet it and slay it next year. That's the hope anyway.

Disagree VERY strongly Moonslav, I agree that the best way to improve your team is to start with your biggest problem, but I very much disagree that our biggest problem is 3B. I think our biggest issue right now is intangibles, and you can't sign away that problem. We just lost our rallying point as a team. Team leadership was centered rather heavily around David Ortiz. We have the horses to make a deep postseason run next year, in terms of roster, the talent is there, all we really need to do is maybe a bit of fine tuning and successfuly fail to outsmart ourselves with stupid fantasy trades, and then maybe not go into a nosedive at the last second this time. If I bring in anyone from the outside right now, I do it for character reasons, not for numbers on a stat sheet. The young core needs to take over and frankly we're running out of veterans with championship experience -- it's pretty much just Pedroia and Buchholz now. I'm concerned that it's that lack of experience that was behind the deer-in-the-headlights look in the team's eyes in the playoffs this year. That's more concerning than anything the offense or defense is going to do next year. Mind you, I don't think we have an intangibles problem per se. IF there's a problem, it's that we don't know who's going to step up and take leadership among this new young group of players. Clearly someone has to. Could be several people, could be nobody, and if it's nobody, that is a problem. But we're operating in the dark a lot more than we were at this time last year and I would be looking to add a veteran or two if I can find a place were it makes sense to put them.

I'm still not even remotely convinced that Quintana is on the market in the first place. The White Sox are not in a classic sellers' position and they have no real reason to trade him -- their offensive problems are hardly insurmountable, Quintana and Sale, plus a roughly average offense (not difficult) and a handful of bullpen improvements (routine offseason shopping list items might be all it takes) puts them on the bubble as a possible playoff team. If the White Sox sign Encarnacion and Janssen or Chapman, that might be all it takes to see them to the playoffs next year. The White Sox are not a small market team, they can throw money around, and they're a little well-thrown money from taking their team to the playoffs. Why sell in that environment? I don't see the White Sox making any trades to downgrade their starting staff when they really aren't that far from playoff contention. I know if I was a Chisox fan, and I thought my team was about to trade a 27 year old ace who's under a cost-controlled contract for the next 4 years -- the single rarest and most precious commodity in all of baseball -- for a grab bag of prospects, I would be PISSED. And so would you.

Because there's no evidence for it. People are speculating and treating the speculation as fact. We have no idea why his numbers in the postseason are bad -- only that they *are* bad. To say anything more than that on the subject just puts one's terrible reasoning skills on display.